Geek Speak review: ‘Dark Knight Rises’ an imperfect but grand end of a legend

“The Dark Knight Rises” is every bit the bombastic climax you’d expect to this gritty, operatic franchise built around a dark city and the dark avenger that looms over it. And while it doesn’t quite rise up to the level of greatness you’d expect or demand for an icon like the Batman, it more than serves as a noble finale to the ascension of its true hero, Bruce Wayne.

As the conductor of this three-film opus, director Christopher Nolan has come full circle with the tale of Bruce Wayne/Batman (Christian Bale) he began with such deliberate strokes in 2005’s “Batman Begins” and built to such a masterful crescendo in 2008’s “The Dark Knight.” Such closure means revisiting what brought Wayne back to Gotham in “Batman Begins” in the first place (the hope to save it from the criminal element that took his parents) and what broke Batman’s spirit in “The Dark Knight” (the failure to save Harvey Dent).

In “Rises,” it’s been eight years since Batman took the fall for Dent’s death to become a fugitive, a shadow of a shadow. That goes for Wayne as well, who’s locked himself up in his stately manor while the city he swore to protect has found a way to protect itself. Of course that doesn’t last. Enter Gotham’s reckoning, a masked behemoth terrorist simply known as Bane (Tom Hardy, more or less understandable even with that claw on his face). Bane is hellbent on finishing the job Ra’s Al Ghul and his League of Shadows never finished in “Begins” — the complete and utter destruction of Gotham, brick by brick, soul by soul, starting with its most privileged.

Yes, it’s easy to make that kneejerk parallel between the rise against Gotham’s elite with the rise of the so-called 99 percent and Occupy Wall Street movement. But “Rises” is the furthest thing from any political or socioeconomic commentary. Rather, Bane’s attack on Gotham has less to do with breaking the 1 percent and more to do with breaking Gotham’s defacto figurehead for both the idle rich and the hopeful proletariat — the breaking of Bruce Wayne and the Batman. In that sense, this big-screen Bane is very much like his comic-book source material, a brilliant but brutal adversary the likes of which Batman has never seen and cannot possibly fight alone.

We all know from the previews that this means war for the soul of Gotham. It also means war for the soul of the man behind the mask. And Batman’s going to need all the help he can get.

In “Rises,” Batman’s allies include his elder brothers in arms, the loyal paternal butler Alfred (Michael Caine, who really shows his range here) and the gadget guru Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman, who alas keeps pat), as well as the only two cops he can trust, Commissioner Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman, also showing his range) and police officer John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who as is becoming more the case, more than holds his own with understated edge). Like Bale throughout this Batman saga, these other extraordinary gentlemen likewise make the most of Nolan’s material with noble gravitas that befits the Batman mythos.

Of course, every war has its fighter that can’t quite pick a side. In “Rises,” it’s the sultry and savvy cat burglar Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway, who inhabits the character much better than you’d expect). Selina slinks between the side of the angels and the demons as she sees fit, though her agenda somewhat parallels Wayne’s and the rest of Gotham’s in that she, too, must find a way to claw out of a seemingly bottomless hole.

And so culminates this epic confrontation/conclusion in ambitious style. Comic fans will see nods to 1993’s storied “Knightfall” series as well as a nod of sorts to “No Man’s Land” and even Frank Miller’s “The Dark Knight Returns,” the last of which saw an older Batman resume the cape and cowl after a decade of retirement to save Gotham from vicious gang violence. But “The Dark Knight Rises” is still very much its own story, not a comic adaptation of those grand comic sagas.

That’s it’s biggest strength, and occasionally it’s biggest stumbling block. “Rises” consistently intends and mostly delivers on its grandeur, and not just because it’s also in IMAX. But it also occasionally loses that scope when it focuses on the tales of its, let’s face it, lesser characters, which doesn’t do its 2 hour and 45 minute running time any favors.

Still, it’s called “The Dark Knight Rises” for a reason, even if in this case that has more to do with the Man than the Bat. For a character that practically marinades in shadow, Batman has always been about bringing forth the light of hope to his beloved city through darkness. So it’s only fitting that Bruce Wayne hit his deepest lows so that his ultimate escalation resonate all the more.

In Nolan’s Batman films, two of the most influential men in this Bruce Wayne narrative both ask Bruce “Why do we fall?” That answer, that conclusion, is what “The Dark Knight Rises” aspires to. Ironically, it’s how its hero reaches it that makes the ending of this Batman legend both enlightening and frustrating. It isn’t perfect and it certainly doesn’t transcend, but it does rise in as grand a fashion as a man with legendary hopes could.